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What Does “Plastic Banana” Mean?

by Rush Limbaugh - May 6,2016

RUSH: Here’s Jim in Dallas, Georgia. It’s great to have you next on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing?

RUSH: I’m good. Thank you.

CALLER: Twenty-eight-year dittos. I’ve been listening to you since the beginning, August ’88. You’ve got a phrase… This is a perfect Open Line Friday call, by the way, ’cause I’m not gonna talk politics. You got a phrase you’ve been using for those years: “phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roller.”

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: Where on earth does the term “plastic banana” come from?

RUSH: I don’t know.


CALLER: I Googled it. I can’t find it. (laughing)

RUSH: (laughing) It just rolled out of my mouth back in 1985 sometime. I’ve been using that since I worked in Sacramento, and I don’t remember what it was that made me put “plastic” and “banana” together. Something had to spark it.

CALLER: So, 28 years of wondering and there’s no answer?

RUSH: Well, there’s an answer; I just can’t recall what it is.

CALLER: Okay. Banana.

RUSH: Do you remember, Snerdley? That may have been the germination for it. When I was growing up —

CALLER: Yeah?

RUSH: — we had all these plastic fruit displays. You know, the artificial fruit in a basket that you put on the table —

CALLER: Okay, yeah.

RUSH: — and it was designed to look like you had real fruit there, except that you didn’t?

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: You know, it was all plastic, so, I mean, there were plastic bananas, and there were plastic apples.

CALLER: Uh-huh. (laughing) I just never know.

RUSH: “Plastic banana,” it was all part of the alliteration of the phrase that made it attractive. It’s just one of those things. It just rolled off, one day and I said, “Wow, that sounded cool,” and I endeavored to try to remember it. A lot of those great phrases that I… You know, I ought to sit down some day and write down all these things that I come up with over the years so I don’t forget them. I appreciate the call, Jim, very much.